Many documents are authored and edited through the collaboration(s) of multiple persons and/or organizations. For example, a document may be created and stored in a central repository, from which other collaboration partners or participants may access the document for updates or other editing or alterations. In other examples, an author of a document may circulate an initial draft, which may then be updated and forwarded by each collaboration participant to another collaboration participant.
Although such collaboration techniques may be sufficient in some circumstances, it is also true that many circumstances exist in which such document collaborations may be improved when compared to the above (and other conventional) techniques. For example, distributed document collaborations may be desired in which multiple participants author documents simultaneously, or when no central repository exists (or is currently available for access), or when collaboration participants dynamically join/leave the collaboration. Still further, complications may occur when documents exist which include multiple different portions; and different ones of the collaboration participants are concerned with different ones of the document portions; or collaboration participants may only be able to exercise authority over selected portions of a complex document. In these and other collaboration scenarios, moreover, document security (e.g., authenticity, confidentiality, and integrity) may be an important concern. It may be difficult to address these and other concerns related to distributed document collaborations in a satisfactory manner.